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Archive for March, 2012

After a while with the Ultimaker, a series of notes on the various things one can do to tune the 3D printing experience.

Some of this is specific to the Ultimaker, but most of it is not. Much of this is personal preference and, frankly, there is probably some stuff in here that is wildly sub-optimal. But, hey, it has worked for me and it worked better than it did when I started.

I.e. feedback and corrections are quite welcome!

First, a note on consumables. I have stuck with PLA (polylactic acid) exclusively. It is a plant derived material that requires a lower temperature and is quite thoroughly non-toxic (there are lots of articles about fume-venting ABSâ€¦ not so with PLA). As well, when I screw up — which is often — the resulting garbage is biodegradable (however, I’m donating my “pile of PLA” to someone who needs input into a PLA scrap-to-usable-filament project).

PLA also doesn’t require — though it can benefit from — a heated print bed. ABS, the other common material, seemingly really does (though one can live without).

Thus, these tips are optimized to PLA.

These tips are also somewhat ordered in the steps that they should be done to maximize benefit. In some cases, that is because the earlier steps have a bigger ROI than later ones. In others, it is simply that the later steps really require the earlier steps first. Read the rest of this entry »

When I started this, as can be seen in the image at left, the case was two parts that fit together in a semi-complex manner (Actually, the very first version just had a little plastic square that covered the AVR, but nothing else). It was hard to print with any quality and, frankly, the front looked awful. So I simplified it such that the IR LED could stick out a small hole, as seen in the middle. But then it dawned on my that the translucent plastics might just be transparent enough to IR that no hole was needed at all.

And sure enough, it just worked!

Thus, the design is now even simpler (assuming you have translucent filament).

Both professionally and as a couch surfer, I’ve found myself interacting with a great deal of devices that can be controlled via infrared remotes. Often, remotes lost in the depths of a couch or misplaced in the fridge (it happens). Clearly, I needed an IR blaster that could be controlled from a computer to both eliminate the “losing the remote” problem and to integrate control of multiple devices into a single UI. Conveniently, Arduino micro-controllers with integrated USB ports are commonly available and quite cheap. Adding an IR LED to an Arduino is trivial, as the ever popular TV-B-Gone project demonstrates.